The NCAA will have to return to court to defend its new limits on the compensation college athletes can receive for playing sports, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken set a trial date of Dec. 3 for the lawsuits, which seek to prevent the NCAA and a group of 11 major conferences from collectively confining athletes to receiving scholarships covering tuition, fees, room, board, books and incidental costs of attending college.

Wilken is the same judge who oversaw the Ed O'Bannon antitrust trial, which resulted in a finding against the NCAA that was modified on appeal.

Both sides in these cases had asked Wilken for a summary judgment ruling in their favor without a trial.

In a 36-page opinion, Wilken did not give either side total victory. However, she rejected several of the NCAA’s critical contentions and set the stage for the plaintiffs to seek a new system that would apply to Division I men’s and women’s basketball players and to football players at Football Bowl Subdivision schools.

The plaintiffs have proposed that limits on athletes’ compensation be set on a conference-by-conference basis, a change that could open the door to athletes being able to capitalize on their names, images and likeness if a conference's schools chose to go that way.

The plaintiffs also have suggested that athletes be allowed to receive all manner of benefits above the cost of attendance that are related to education and/or are incidental to their participation in their sports.

“We’d call this ruling a home run,” said Steve Berman, one of the lead plaintiffs’ attorneys. “We couldn’t have plotted it out better for us, frankly. … I absolutely think we are going to win this trial.”

Said another of the plaintiffs’ lead attorneys, Jeffrey Kessler: “This a great day for college athletes. We are very much looking forward to getting our day in court for these wonderful athletes.”

The NCAA and the conferences have a narrow ability to appeal, but it is likely the cases will proceed unless there is a settlement.

"The court’s decision recognized, as other courts have for decades, that principles of amateurism and student-athlete well-being are critical to college sports," the NCAA said in a statement. "We look forward to proving at trial that the rules are essential to providing educational opportunities to nearly half a million student-athletes."

Wilken set a non-jury trial of no more than 10 days that presumably would take place in the same Oakland courthouse where she oversaw the O’Bannon case.

The NCAA had argued that the ultimate outcome of the O’Bannon case – a ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – meant these cases should be thrown out. The 9th Circuit panel agreed with Wilken’s finding of an antitrust violation. But it rejected one of her remedies – the prospect of athletes being eligible for up to $5,000 a year in deferred compensation that they could receive after their college playing careers as consideration for schools’ use of their names, images and likenesses.

In overturning this remedy, the appellate panel said that while antitrust law requires that schools be allowed to provide athletes with scholarships that cover all of their costs of attending college, “it does not require more,” such as what it termed “cash sums untethered to educational expenses.”

However, in rejecting the NCAA’s contention that the O’Bannon case's outcome should result in the dismissal of these cases, Wilken wrote: “A ruling on less restrictive alternatives to certain NCAA rules in one case does not bar consideration of different less restrictive alternatives to a different, if overlapping, set of rules challenged in a different case.”

And in this case, Wilken noted, the plaintiffs are not making a relatively narrow challenge to the NCAA’s bar on athletes getting money related to the use of their names, images and likenesses.

“Rather,” she wrote, “the challenged restraints are the current, interconnected set of NCAA rules that generally limit financial aid to the cost of attendance yet also fix the prices of numerous and varied exceptions – additional benefits that have a financial value above the cost of attendance. Some of these rules regulate payment for additional benefits that do appear to be tethered to education … ”

For example she noted NCAA restrictions on schools' ability to reimburse athletes for computers, science equipment, musical instruments and other items "not currently included in the cost of attendance calculation but nonetheless related to the pursuit of various academic studies."

Under antitrust law, these types of restraints can exist if a defendant can show that the limits have certain benefits. In Wednesday’s ruling, Wilken said the NCAA produced “no evidence” to support six justifications it had offered in these cases, and she rejected the evidence they offered for a seventh.

She basically left the association with two justifications that she said they could attempt to back up at trial: the notion that fans are drawn to college football and basketball “in part due to their perception of amateurism” and the contention that “paying student-athletes would detract from the integration of academics and athletics in the campus community.”

However, even justified restraints can be overcome if plaintiffs can show there are less restrictive alternatives that would achieve the same outcome for the defendants without significantly increased cost. And here, Wilken said the plaintiffs have offered two alternatives she is willing to consider at trial.

She wrote that the NCAA member schools’ willingness to give schools in the Power Five conferences the autonomy to make certain NCAA rules changes “constitutes evidence sufficient to raise a factual question that allowing relevant areas of autonomy for all Division I conferences would be a less restrictive alternative to current NCAA rules.”

She also wrote that she would entertain an end to “all national rules that prohibit or limit any payments or non-cash benefits that are tethered to educational expenses, or any payments or benefits that are incidental to athletic participation.” She noted that the plaintiffs had provided evidence that schools already are allowed to “offer some benefits above the cost of attendance that are related to athletic participation but not tethered to education” like gift cards some football players get for playing in a bowl game.

The cases originally were filed separately in different parts of the country. However, because of their similarity they were put through pre-trial proceedings together in front of Wilken, who had been assigned the first of the two cases.

That case began on behalf of former West Virginia football player Shawne Alston, and is being led by the Seattle-based Berman. Alston remains a named plaintiff, but the initial case was consolidated with other suits involving athletes in other sports.

In addition to the injunction, the Alston case also sought damages based on the difference between the value of a scholarship under the NCAA’s former rules and the value of a cost-of-attendance-based scholarship. But those claims are part of a $209 million settlement.

The second case, being directed primarily by the New York-based Kessler, was filed on behalf of plaintiffs led by former Clemson football player Martin Jenkins, former Wisconsin basketball player Nigel Hayes and current Wisconsin football player Alec James.